What if Apple Watch Edition pricing is boringly reasonable?

I’ve never seen a smartwatch that I’d wear except the Apple Watch. It’s not that I think the rest are all ugly — most are, some are less so. But they’ve all looked like too strong a combination of cheap,1 absurdly geeky,2 and chunky for my taste, even though I wear $40 jeans and a $10 black T-shirt every day. My outfit feels reasonably acceptable, but an exceptionally geeky watch doesn’t.

I cannot look past my fashion preferences for a smartwatch’s functionality benefits. Looking good to me and making me feel good about wearing it is a fundamental requirement. Watches are a combination of functionality and jewelry for most wearers, often with the jewelry side as a higher priority.

The biggest challenge Apple faced with the design of the Apple Watch has nothing to do with battery life or screen technology: How do you make a smartwatch that most people will want to wear?

Everyone draws that line differently. A lot of tech people will see the Pebble Time or Time Steel as within those lines, but I don’t think it stands a chance in the mass market, especially the upscale market. To me, it still looks like a relatively crude geekwatch, and to everyone else, it’s going to look like a bad Apple Watch knockoff.

I actually own a Pebble watch and a pair of Google Glasses… The Pebble watch gets worn nearly every day, and the Google Glass not half as much as it used to.

Given a choice between a Pebble and an Apple Watch though, it’s a toss up, one of the things I like about the Pebble is that I can quickly build an app and get it out there, while you have a few more hoops to jump through for the Apple Watch..

At the same time, there has never been any question at all when it comes to the question of Android Wear / Gear vs Pebble. Pebble wins hands down each time.

But, I’ll be making sure to give Apple Watch a good test when it does come out before making a final decision.

In this article, I mean “cheap” as both inexpensive and being of low build quality, made from low-quality materials, or looking crudely or poorly designed. Being inexpensive alone isn’t a problem if the quality is there. ↩